Tuesday 19 July 2005 05.57 EDT
First published on Tuesday 19 July 2005 05.57 EDT

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Thursday July 21 2005

The Vanity Fair article at the centre of the Roman Polanski libel case was written by AE Hotchner and not Lewis Lapham, as we stated in error in the article below. Lewis Lapham is the editor of Harper's magazine and he is quoted in the Vanity Fair article.

Roman Polanski's barrister insisted it was not his client's "laissez-faire" attitude to casual sex that was on trial in his libel suit against Condé Nast, the publishers of Vanity Fair, in court number 13 in the Strand yesterday.

However, from the moment that the 71-year-old film director began giving his high court evidence it was clear that sex was going to be at the forefront of proceedings. Polanski was suing the magazine over its allegation that in 1969, on the way to his wife Sharon Tate's funeral in Los Angeles after her murder by the Charles Manson family, he had made a pass at a woman in a Manhattan restaurant.

Polanski was not in court to defend his reputation but, for the first time for a British libel trial, was giving evidence via a live videolink from Paris. But that did not detract from the prurient nature of some of the questioning.

"What exactly do you mean by casual sex, Mr Polanski?" asked Tom Shields QC for Condé Nast, cross-examining Polanski in front of a courtroom that included Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, and Sharon Tate's sister Debra. "I mean sexual relations without emotional involvement," he replied. "For recreation, as we used to say in the swinging sixties."

It soon became clear that Polanski, who stood in a blue suit and tie while giving evidence from his Paris hotel room, was happy to admit to all sorts of past licentiousness - even to an episode in which he seduced an actress in Rome while Tate was in California pregnant with their child - but that he drew the line at the Vanity Fair allegations.

In the July 2002 article, written by Lewis Lapham, the magazine alleged that on his way from London to his wife's funeral, Polanski had stopped at Elaine's, a Manhattan restaurant, and pulled up a chair next to a Swedish woman, "inundating her with his Polish charm".

The article added: "Fascinated by his performance, I watched as he slid his hand inside her thigh and began a long honeyed spiel which ended with the promise 'And I will make another Sharon Tate out of you'. "

Asked by his barrister, John Kelsey-Fry QC, how he felt reading the allegations, Polanski replied that it was "the worst thing ever written about me. It is obvious that it's not true. I don't think you could find a man who could behave in such a way but I think it was particularly hurtful as it dishonours my memory of Sharon".

Earlier Mr Kelsey-Fry told the jury that Vanity Fair's allegation, if true, "would demonstrate a callous indifference to what had happened and to his wife's memory of breathtaking proportions". He said that the magazine, which denies libel, now accepted that Polanski was in London on August 8, 1969, when the eight-months pregnant actress was slaughtered with four friends at the couple's home in Bel Air, California, and took a direct flight to Los Angeles. Its case was that the encounter with the Swede occured two weeks or so after the funeral, and that the article was substantially true.

Polanski was giving evidence by video link to avoid the risk of being extradited from Britain to the US. The Oscar-winning director of The Pianist and films like Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby has not set foot in the US since fleeing the country in 1977, hours before he was due to be sentenced after pleading guilty to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl, and has not visited this country since 1978.

The stage for yesterday's cross-examination by video was set in February when the law lords ruled that Polanski should not be denied access to justice because of his fear of extradition. Mr Kelsey-Fry said that although the unresolved US case was a "most unsightly blot" on his client's reputation, that was not what the case was about. Nor was it about the fact that he had demonstrated a "somewhat laissez-faire attitude to casual sex" earlier in his life.

Polanski admitted his relationship with Tate was not monogamous and that he had had sex with other women, both before and during the marriage. Tate was aware of his philandering before she married him and during their marriage. "She was not happy with it. She did not like it but she tolerated it." His record of casual sex, he said, should be seen in the context of his despair: "I mean that the death of Sharon and the whole tragedy and of my friends was immeasurably sad to me, and in such moments some people turn to drugs, others to alcohol, some go to a monastery - to me it was sex."

According to Mr Kelsey-Fry, Polanski did not remember being in New York or visiting Elaine's in August 1969 as he been distraught over his wife's murder. His main concern at that time had been to clear her name in the wake of press speculation about drug-fuelled orgies and witchcraft at their Bel Air home. Mr Kelsey-Fry said he had to be reminded by a friend that he had visited Elaine's with the actress Mia Farrow, the star of Rosemary's Baby, on his way back from Los Angeles.

Polanski, who fled the Krakow ghetto during the second world war after his parents were deported to concentration camps by the Nazis, said Vanity Fair's allegation that he had tried to pick up or seduce a girl by exploiting Tate's name was an "abominable lie. It's not the way I behave as far as my sexual life is concerned.I still had some honour. I still have now".

He added that his wife, who he first met in London when he was preparing to film Fearless Vampire Killers, was a "sweet, brilliant" person. "She was just, in my eyes, a perfect woman," he said, wiping away a tear.

In his cross-examination Mr Shields repeatedly homed in on Polanski's past infidelities and seductions, often quoting directly to him from passages from his 1984 autobiography, Roman. At one point he asked Polanski whether seducing a woman four weeks after his wife's burial was not showing just as much callous indifference as Vanity Fair's seduction allegation.

Mr Shields: "So, if you are seduced by an air hostess within four weeks, that's all right, but it's not all right to put your hand on someone's thigh?"

Polanski: "Yes, it would not be callous and indifferent to have sex at that time. If I had sex with a prostitute - not something that I practise - I don't think it would be callous or indifferent."

At another point he admitted having sex at least on one occasion with two women at the same time. One was 15 or 16 and the other was 18. He told Mr Shields: "I can assure you it wasn't illegal. It was within the laws of that country. I made only one mistake and I am still suffering for that."

He had only fled America after learning that the sentence he was going to receive was not the probation he had expected and he did not see any contradiction between his seeking to sue Condé Nast in a British court and his refusal to expose himself to extradition proceedings by submitting to British justice.

"What I did was wrong and I don't see why I should go back to this for the purposes of this trial," he said.

Earlier, Mr Kelsey-Fry warned the jury that Condé Nast would seek to suggest that, even if their defence failed, Polanski should still not be awarded any damages because his "reputation is as nothing" because of the 1977 conviction and his "self-confessed" promiscuity and libertine past.

However, he urged the jury to set the record straight over what was a "monstrous and untrue" allegation and invited them to award Polanski damages "sufficient to bring home the falsity" of the article. The hearing continues today.

Survival, success, and tragedy

· A childhood survivor of the Krakow ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland, Polanski made his stage acting debut at 14 and performed on a popular radio show, The Merry Gang. In his early 20s he appeared in Andrzej Wajda's acclaimed film, A Generation (1954), about Polish wartime resistance against the Nazis, as well as in Wajda's Lotna, Innocent Sorcerers, and Samson.

· After attending art school in Krakow, he studied at the Polish film school in Lodz. While there he won festival prizes with short films, such as Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958).

· His first major film, Knife in the Water (1962) brought him international acclaim as winner of the critics prize at the Venice film festival. It was nominated for an Oscar as best foreign language film and was featured on the cover of Time magazine.

· Came to England and made three films, including the classic Repulsion (1965) about the paranoia and madness of a young Frenchwoman alone in London, starring Catherine Deneuve.

· Moved to America and scored his first Hollywood hit with Rosemary's Baby (1968) which starred Mia Farrow as a woman who dreams she has been impregnated by the devil. The success was soon overtaken by the murder in 1969 of Polanski's pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, by members of a cult led by Charles Manson.

· Polanski made his return to film with an oppressive and gloomy version of Macbeth in 1971.

· The pinnacle of his Hollywood career came with the 1974 thriller Chinatown. It won an Oscar for best original screenplay, was nominated in 11 other categories, and made Jack Nicholson a major star.

· For his film Tess (1979), Polanski received an Oscar nomination as best director, and the film also won Oscars for cinematography, art direction and costume design.

· Refused to direct Speilberg's Schindler's List, saying its subject matter was too painful but made The Pianist (2002), the story of a Warsaw ghetto Jew fighting for survival amid the horror of the Holocaust. The film, starring Adrien Brody, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, best director and best film awards at the Baftas, and Oscars for best director and best actor.

· Polanski's latest film is a big budget version of Dickens's Oliver Twist, due for release this October. Filmed in Prague it features a largely British cast including Ben Kingsley as Fagin and Jamie Foreman as Bill Sikes.